This work is building on important research carried out from the mid 1990s that has contradicted the pessimistic findings of Parsons, Jencks and Plowden. Some key figures in this research are the Americans, Fred Newmann (1996) and Linda Darling- Hammond, (1997; 2000; & Youngs, 2002). Newmann's work centred heavily on the effects of 'pedagogical dynamics' in impacting on student achievement. These dynamics were a mixture of technical craft on the part of teachers through to more subtle features like 'school coherence' and the creation of a 'trustful, supportive ambience'. Darling-Hammond's work built further on these notions to demonstrate the power of pedagogy to make a difference in student potential, including its capacity to overcome disadvantage owing to student background and even disability of sorts. In their own ways, both works overturned the earlier assumptions about the limited capacity of the agency of teaching and schooling to impact on student achievement. At the same time, they demonstrated the vast difference between the teaching broadly described as 'quality teaching' and regular, more limited teaching, described as'ineffective teaching'. In both Newmann's and Darling-Hammond's work, quality teaching is partly about the teacher's technical competence around issues of content knowledge and strategies, but is also heavily about the teacher's (and indeed the whole school's) capacity to form positive relationships and to provide positive modelling. This is the vital clue concerned with the part to be played by Values Education.